The Vault

by Mark Dawson

  “The Rus­si­ans?”

  “Ok­sana, really. She gave me an­other way out.”

  “And how did you find me now?”

  “The Rus­si­ans, again. I called the em­bassy. They found you and told me where you were.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  Walker smiled. It wasn’t ne­ces­sar­ily friendly; there was a glint in his eye that gave Mack­in­tosh cause for con­cern. “I’m pleased I found you,” he said. “There’s some­thing we need to dis­cuss.”

  “Yes,” Mack­in­tosh said. “We do.”

  Mack­in­tosh star­ted off and Walker settled in along­side him.

  “You wanted me to get Schmidt,” Walker said. “I did that. And you wanted Som­mer dead. That’s done, too. I went back into the cell after you left. I saw what you did.”

  “You did everything I asked you to do, James. And, yes, be­fore you ask, I know what I said I’d do for you. The charges against you will be dropped. I’ll call Scot­land Yard this af­ter­noon. You don’t need to worry about that—it’s done. You have my word.”

  “That’s good of you,” Walker said. “And I don’t want to sound un­grate­ful, but I do worry. Your word doesn’t give me a huge amount of con­fid­ence. You kept in­form­a­tion from me in Ber­lin. You made me make a de­cision without know­ing all the facts.”

  “Would you have said no if you’d known?”

  “Prob­ably not, but that’s be­side the point. You weren’t truth­ful. You’re not trust­worthy.”

  Mack­in­tosh felt a flicker of an­ger; he sus­pec­ted he was about to be threatened. “So what are we go­ing to do?”

  “I just want you to do what you prom­ised to do. That’s it. And I don’t want you ever to bother me or my fam­ily again. You, the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices, the po­lice—I just want to live a nor­mal life, no in­ter­fer­ence, no fear that you’ve got some­thing that you can hold over me.”

  “So stop rob­bing banks and you’ll have noth­ing to worry about.”

  Walker smiled, but it was thin and without hu­mour. “Here’s the thing,” he said. He reached into his jacket and took out an en­vel­ope. “I broke into Som­mer’s vault. I found this.”

  He held out the en­vel­ope and Mack­in­tosh took it. He slid his fin­ger into the seal and opened it, tak­ing out sev­eral pieces of pa­per that had been stapled in the top right corner. Mack­in­tosh turned the pages. He felt sick, and he felt worse with every fresh line that he read.

  “You can have that,” Walker said. “I have the ori­ginal—you won’t be able to find it. It’s my in­sur­ance. If any­thing hap­pens to me, it gets sent to the pa­pers.”

  Mack­in­tosh hardly heard him. He stared at the page, un­able to credit what he was see­ing. The Stasi had had him un­der sur­veil­lance for months. There were pho­to­graphs of him and Élodie. He had thought that they had been care­ful, but, evid­ently, they had not. There was a long-lens pho­to­graph of them at Hochoster­witz, the two of them em­bra­cing in front of the castle. The next page was a copy of the Swiss bank ac­count that he had set up.

  “The front page is a sum­mary,” Walker said. “It’s in Ger­man—I trans­lated it with a dic­tion­ary. I think I’ve got the gist of it. Seems that the wo­man in those pic­tures with you was French. They said she worked for French in­tel­li­gence.”

  “Yes,” Mack­in­tosh snapped, feel­ing the noose tight­en­ing around his neck and yet still strug­gling to loosen it, to deny what the Stasi had found out. “The op­er­a­tion to get Schmidt was a joint op­er­a­tion with the DGSE.”

  “But they say that you and her were in­volved, and that bank state­ment says you were re­ceiv­ing large de­pos­its. The Stasi seem to think she was pay­ing you.” He shrugged as they walked. “I’ve no idea how your busi­ness works, but, in my busi­ness, Swiss bank ac­counts are usu­ally used by people who have some­thing they want to hide.”

  Mack­in­tosh tightened his fist, crump­ling the pa­pers.

  “Don’t think I’m passing judge­ment,” Walker said. “I don’t care if you’re get­ting paid, who’s pay­ing you, how they pay you—I don’t care about that. Like you say, I’ve made my money rob­bing banks. I’d be a hy­po­crite. Any­way—I wanted you to have that. And you’ve got my word that, as long as you do right by me and my fam­ily, that never sees the light of day.”

  Mack­in­tosh felt his cheeks throb­bing with blood, and knew that he had no choice but to take a deep breath, to bite his tongue, to tamp down his an­ger. It was the loss of con­trol that stirred his tem­per. Secrets were an in­ev­it­able part of the life of an agent, but the ones who las­ted—the ones who didn’t get cash­iered, or pos­ted to point­less out­posts, or killed—those agents made sure that they held the secrets, and were not the ones with secrets that could be used against them by oth­ers. And there was em­bar­rass­ment, too: that the Stasi had known this about him, and that James Walker—a two-bit, no-ac­count bank rob­ber—knew about it, too.

  Mack­in­tosh had been played, twice, and he hated it.

  They had reached the bot­tom of White­hall. Par­lia­ment Square was in front of them and, to the left, Big Ben was just chim­ing the hour. Traffic was flow­ing in both dir­ec­tions and they had to wait to cross.

  “Do we un­der­stand one an­other?” Walker asked.

  “Piss off,” Mack­in­tosh said.

  “I will, but I need to hear you say it.”

  Mack­in­tosh took a deep breath, try­ing to put enough air in his lungs that he might be able to re­lieve the tight­ness that felt like an iron band around his breast.

  He forced the words out, one by one. “We do.”

  Walker had his hand out. Mack­in­tosh put his bot­tom lip between his teeth and bit down, hard enough to draw blood, then reached out and took it.

  “I’d love to say it was a pleas­ure, but—”

  “Just fuck off, James.”

  Walker grinned at him, let go of his hand, turned to­ward West­min­ster Bridge and walked away.

  64

  Jimmy flagged down a taxi. He got into the back and told the driver to take him to Hack­ney.

  The man looked back at him in the mir­ror. “You all right, mate? You look done in.”

  “It’s been a long week,” he said.

  *

  That was the truth.

  Jimmy had found a car with of­fi­cial plates in a park­ing lot a short walk away from the Pfarrhaus. It was a lux­ury sedan—a GAZ Chaika—and Jimmy had de­cided that it would be a good choice given that he was dressed as a senior Stasi of­ficer. He knew that his cover was flimsy, and would be blown as soon as he was asked to open his mouth, and so he de­cided to bank on the chance that by look­ing im­port­ant he would re­duce the pos­sib­il­ity of a ju­nior man risk­ing the op­pro­brium of in­con­veni­en­cing him.

  He had driven north out of the city, passing through Schön­holz and Rosenthal and then out bey­ond its outer bound­ar­ies. He main­tained a north­erly head­ing and drove for five hours without stop­ping. The land­scape was flat and covered with thick snow. He passed Neurup­pin, Witt­stock and Güstrow, aim­ing for Rostock and then head­ing north­w­est for the coast.

  Kühlungs­born was a small fish­ing port. Jimmy fol­lowed Ok­sana’s dir­ec­tions to a café that looked out over the Baltic Sea. The pro­pri­etor was a gruff East Ger­man called Bur­meister. He had re­cog­nised Ok­sana’s name and, after a short con­ver­sa­tion, he took Jimmy to a small bed­room in the at­tic. He told him to stay out of sight while he made the pre­par­a­tions for his ex­filtra­tion. Jimmy took off the uni­form and re­placed it with warm clothes that Bur­meister’s wife brought to him: jeans made from thick denim, a flan­nel shirt, a heavy wool jumper. There was a bright yel­low oil­skin, too, and heavy wa­ter­proof boots.

  Bur­meister drove him to the har­bour just be­fore mid­night and led him to a skiff that was tied up at
the end of a pier. Jimmy lowered him­self down into the boat. Bur­meister star­ted the en­gine and they cast off. Bur­meister warned him that the low levels of salt in the Baltic Sea made it prone to large waves, and he had been quickly proven right. The skiff was tossed around as soon as they were bey­ond the har­bour walls, and Jimmy was con­vinced that they would cap­size. Bur­meister was skilled, though, and his fears of drown­ing were quickly re­placed by the cer­tainty that they would be picked up by the patrol boats that Jimmy had seen moored in the har­bour. That fear, too, had been mis­placed.

  The light­ship was sev­en­teen kilo­metres out to sea. Bur­meister pulled along­side and se­cured a lad­der that was thrown down. Jimmy scaled it and was pulled aboard the big­ger boat. His bag was hauled up on a rope; Jimmy didn’t let it out of his sight. He was given dry clothes and a hot drink as the cap­tain of the light­ship ra­di­oed the local post boat to come and col­lect the stowaway, us­ing a code­word in case the Stasi was mon­it­or­ing ra­dio traffic. Jimmy hid be­low deck for twelve hours un­til the post boat ar­rived, trans­ferred onto it with his bag and hid again as it made the choppy cross­ing to the Dan­ish is­land of Møn. It was easier from there: a ferry to the main­land, and a train to Copen­ha­gen.

  He had taken a room in a hotel near the air­port and slept. When he awoke, he set to work. He went down to the busi­ness centre and made pho­to­cop­ies of the file on Mack­in­tosh that he had taken from Som­mer’s vault. Next, he made an ap­point­ment at the branch of Nordea in Taastrup, twenty minutes west of the cap­ital. The bank offered safe de­posit boxes, and Jimmy had ren­ted one of their largest for six months. The man­ager took him down to an ante­cham­ber next to the vault and had left him with the box. Jimmy trans­ferred the in­gots, ar­ran­ging them so that they filled the bot­tom half of the box. He put most of the money on top of that, keep­ing three thou­sand pounds to take back home with him. He put Mack­in­tosh’s Stasi file in­side, too, keep­ing the pho­to­cop­ies. He waited as the bank staff struggled with the weight of the box, re­pla­cing it in the vault, and then made his way back out onto the street.

  Jimmy knew that he would have to be cre­at­ive in find­ing a way to get the bul­lion out of the coun­try, but that was a prob­lem for an­other day.

  65

  The taxi reached Hack­ney and plot­ted a route through streets that Jimmy knew. He looked out of the win­dow with a smile on his face. He had wondered whether he would ever see these houses and shops again. The driver turned onto Valentine Road and parked next to the house. Jimmy paid him, adding a gen­er­ous tip, and got out. It was a cold, fresh day, and Jimmy stood on the path for a mo­ment and breathed it in. It was re­fresh­ing, noth­ing like the fri­gid­ity of East Ger­many or the bone-freez­ing chill of the Baltic. He climbed the steps to his front door, took a mo­ment to com­pose him­self, and then rapped his knuckles against it.

  The door opened. Isa­bel was stand­ing there, her mouth open.

  “Hello, darling,” Jimmy said. “I’m home.”